


Deer Hunting with Cheney

by hw_campbell_jr



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Beer, Cocaine, Flashbacks, Gulf War, Hunting, Lots of guns, M/M, US Politics - Freeform, george w. bush - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-25
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 19:03:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9916643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hw_campbell_jr/pseuds/hw_campbell_jr
Summary: Tony and Justin, and some guy from Lockheed Martin, are competing for the last weapons contract of the W. Bush presidency. Dick Cheney makes them prove their respective American manlinesses on a Wyoming hunting trip. Because he's an asshole. And because Tony pissed him off during the first Gulf War, and he's holding a grudge.It's 2007, and Iron Man is not yet a twinkle in Tony's eye. He and Justin will end up boning in an unpleasant and regrettable way that Justin will forever remember and Tony will try to forget.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> There's a lot of flashbacks to Tony's early wheeling and dealing at Stark Industries. Just a heads up, since it's all pretty, you know, arms dealery and awful. 
> 
> Also: despite the timeline presented in CA:CW, I age Tony the same as RDJ, meaning he was well into his 20s in 1991. 
> 
> I work on this story whenever I remember I have it. Updates are likely to be somewhat intermittent, but they will happen.

At exactly 10:30 pm, on the day Tony turned 27, he was staring bleakly into a mirror and also the vacuum of his own soul. He remembers it exactly, and he remembers he thought about it exactly that pretentiously. He was high, after all. Young, high, and wiping the coke off his nose in the bathroom of a hip midtown eatery. He was 27, it was 1991, and Bill Clinton had just played the saxophone on television.

Or at least, Bill Clinton playing the sax had just been broadcast to a channel showing in the restaurant. Tony doesn’t know for sure, or care. He remembers seeing it, that’s all, remembers that they’d all stopped partying to watch Clinton blowing on his sax and wearing sunglasses. It was sure something. It was some kind of event, and he couldn't stop getting coke-introspective about it.

It was his birthday after all, he was already inclined towards being kind of thinky.

Tony really has all of his most annoying thoughts staring into mirrors - that hasn’t got any less true with age. It probably started younger than 27, but for some reason, it’s that birthday he remembers as watershed. He’d already had way too much coke to get a handle on what exactly he was thinking about, but he still couldn’t stop thinking it. Distance hasn’t helped any, either. Tony doesn’t like not knowing the answers to problems - maybe that’s why he remembers the birthday? That also hasn’t got any less true with age. It’s 2007 now, that he’s remembering this, and it’s absolutely still a true fact about him.

He also remembers that way too much coke would have been the point initially, wouldn’t at first have been a negative. Too much coke was basically the rule for a birthday, followed by too much champagne and too extravagant finger food to wash it down. Dancing ‘till dawn too, and/or getting disgusting amounts of fucked-up laid.

He’d anticipated disgusting. He’d anticipated needing a full bandolier of condoms, breath mints in case he threw up his 3 Michelin Star sumac skewers of chicken and prosciutto wrapped honeydew, even anticipated saying no if anyone offered him a ‘lude so that he could stay up instead of getting down. He had not anticipated endless, circular thinking about Clinton and his saxophone.

  
 That fucking saxophone though. Even in retrospect Tony finds it arresting. That fucking suit and those glasses, that contrived and obnoxious performance of being Young and Hip and Now (“now” was the kind of thing people said in 1991. That, and “the first Black President”). It was an event, it was a moment. Pre-President Bubba, Teflon Bill, coming up hard on Bush and Quayle and Cheney, on those Red White and Blue Family Values Guys. Those old men, they were camped out in the White House, stinking up the place with their failure, their  _refusal_  to innovate. And Clinton was playing the saxophone.

Clinton wasn’t even that young. He just also wasn’t that old.

Bush and Quayle and Cheney were old. 27-year-old Tony was painfully aware of how old they were, seeing as it was directed at him during a chunk of his work week. These guys, they’d burned through the Persian Gulf like a last will and testament until Bush signed a chunk of Stark Business away with the "end" of that “conflict”, and they still wanted to talk arms. The extent to which they were out of touch was palpable, but they still wanted to talk like they knew everything.

They were at Camp David when Cheney first talked down to Tony about the Gulf. Like he was some young upstart instead of the CEO of his whole fucking company, when he’d been the CEO for _six fucking years_. Tony resented it. He resented it because he was right - Tony was, that is - and he resented it because of the attitude. He was trying to explain something Cheney clearly didn’t get: there are a lot of ways to make a war. That wasn’t pretentious, it was just true. The best empire is the one they don’t even know is coming, he was trying to say. It’s not about nations anymore. They didn’t have to “end” anything. They just had to shift focus. Change it up from a single dictator to an ideology. Why wouldn’t they listen? Why stop at Kuwait?  
   
Cheney gets that now, sure. He’s all about that now. Tony hears all the same jokes everyone else hears, about the expansion of the Darth Cheney Empire, but Cheney didn’t get it then, none of them did, and it was infuriating, because they talked to Tony like he was an idiot.

Cheney especially. Bush and Quayle didn’t get it either, but it was Cheney who mattered. Cheney was in charge, Cheney was the one saying he would only deal with Obi because Tony wasn’t the Real Thing like Howard was. Cheney was the one who refused to be convinced Tony was enough of a “patriot” to deal with the White House, like being a patriot even mattered in 1991. And okay, maybe Tony wasn’t one but he was committed enough to money, and America, _real_ America, was always about money. Tony was far too brilliant for nationalism even at 27, but he knew which side his Freedom Fries were ketchuped on. Cheney should have known that.

He may or may not be convinced of it now. It’s impossible to tell. In a field, in Wyoming, in 2007, Tony is hiking through mud and scrub on Cheney’s land, unsure about this very thing. Baby Bush is a second term president in his twilight year, Tony is 43 and a respectable man, and there are no mirrors around, and Cheney… well, Cheney is Cheney. Which is to say that he sucks bombastically. Basically the one pleasure that Tony has in this shitty situation is that Cheney actually prefers to be addressed as “Dick”.

Actually, to be strictly accurate, nothing about Tony is respectable exactly, but his business acumen is impeccable, and Cheney has presumably been forced to at least acknowledge that fact. He did, in fact, make everybody plenty of bank under Slick Willie, for example, and he made it look easy. Hats are off to Tony in the Ridiculously Rich community. They admire him.

Baby Bush has been better though. Clinton was eviler than he looked, but Baby Bush is a straightforward simpleton and Dick Cheney is a dyed-in-the-wool warmonger. It’s been a good and especially deadly season for Stark Ind.

As such, uncertainty about the 90s is coming up for Tony because he can’t think of another reason he’s here in Wyoming with fucking Justin Hammer of all people and whoever that is from Lockheed-Martin (names, Tony needs to get better at names. He’s not always going to be allowed a Pepper to remind him, he’s not always going to be able to pull out his phone and talk to JARVIS.  _Wyoming_ ), instead of at the White House or somewhere else… more indoorsy. They all know Baby Bush is going to strike hard at least once before he’s gone, and if Tony can outbid these ass-clowns, then Stark Ind. stands to make some serious fucking money from it, but he shouldn’t be bidding at all. They know him. They know Stark tech.

He’s fucked up somehow, obviously. It must be personal. And it hasn’t been recent, so it must be the past.

Dickfuck Cheney is evidently not the kind of guy who forgets a slight, even one more than 15 years old. Instead, he is the sort of guy that will hand someone a beer, and when that someone isn’t entirely inclined to be handed something, Cheney will slap that someone a little too hard on the back. Hard enough to make their breath catch, to make the site of the slap sting. “Take the fucking beer, Stark,” Cheney said. “What, are ya scared of getting man germs on you?”  
   
Yes, actually, Tony thought at the time, and it’s a serious medical issue. But Tony’s not stupid, obviously. When Cheney slapped him, he remembered the 90s and he took the beer. Before coming out here, Tony has wondered many times if Cheney remembers Tony’s being right all along about the Gulf, but he’s 100% sure now that he does. His back still hurts and his hand feels disgusting and he regrets underestimating Cheney’s sleeper-resentment.

Besides the 90s, Tony knows about the quail incident. He also knows about some other, less publicized incidences that are the sort of things you hear about if you run long enough in Cheney-adjacent circles. Karl Rove is still sulking about not being invited hunting, because he took back that whole thing about not endorsing Cheney’s Vice Presidency, he swears, and according to Obi he’s been telling tales.

This seems about right for Karl Rove. Rove can suck all the air out of a room and all the fun out of voting Republican (if Tony votes Republican? He should probably follow that up with Pepper), but his particular skill is dropping targeted, finely honed nuggets of gossip in the precise places they’ll do the most damage. It’s not an unusual skill - Republican dudes are like high school girls as a rule, just as petty. Sure, they have senates and money, and also they love shooting you in the fucking face, but Rove isn’t weird for gossiping like this, he’s just advanced. Tony sometimes secretly thinks of him as the Gretchen Wieners of the White House.

Since that beer, Tony is watching out and behaving himself, more than he’d usually do, and more that he’s supposed to pretend he is. Presumably Hammer and Monsieur Lockheed are doing the same thing, in the rare moments they forget to be drunk-ass frat boys (seriously, fuck those guys) and remember that they are holding firearms in the fucking  _wilderness_  with  _Dick Cheney_ , but Tony suspects it’s probably not quite as personal.

Serious fucking money, Tony reminds himself, like a little prayer. Like orders of magnitude over and above the kind of money Stark Ind. has being pulling in on the Gulf so far. Vietnam money. It would make Kuwait look like a win at a slot machine, it would make everything in the Gulf since into random acts of small potatoes. This would be a real score, a Howard-level contract.

Tony is not worried about beating out Hammer, but he is slightly worried about Mister Lockheed. Not because of their tech - Stark tech is better than the best, there’s no realistic completion on grounds of functionality - but because Mister Lockheed is apparently some kind of wilderness guy, and because this is all on Cheney’s say-so here.

Because Cheney is testing them. That’s actually what’s happening. That’s the subtext of this cheery little hunting jaunt. It’s not even about the tech. This is all hinging on how much of a Man Cheney thinks Tony is now. Great. Fanfuckingtastic.

And they’re supposed to call him Dick. Presumably because everyone here is a ballpark peer in terms of personal wealth (uh, they wish, but sure, okay, fine). And because everyone is "fine" with guns in a “kind of sort of" way, even Hammer. Like, Tony might make fun of what a pussy Hammer looks like, but the trigger etiquette is okay, stance is good, it’s more that he looks like he wishes he was wearing gloves. It’s pussyish, alright, but it’s not wrong. They’re all guys here, they’re all rich guys.  
   
And everyone is loading up on what is clearly being sold as an appropriately masculine amount of shitty domestic beer, which really maybe is the worst part of this whole thing (even the quail hunting guy got scotch), but at least it’s booze. This drinking is about “bonding”, that much is obvious. And because of this? In this precise situation? Cheney actively prefers “Dick” and is saying so.  
   
He has said this several times, actually. He is literally not shutting up about the fact that they can call him Dick. He's saying it in this weird, sinister voice, smiling but  _sort of not really_ , like when he handed Tony the beer. The whole thing is like he’s daring all of them to call him Dick and try to get away with it. They’re walking through the Wyoming scrub, drinking, dropping their empty beer cans back into the cooler, and Dick Cheney is daring them. Or possibly daring Tony specifically.  
   
Tony is trying not to think about how abjectly terrifying this is. He is trying to keep concentrated. He is trying to do banter. He is trying not to think about Clinton and that shitty birthday and how he fucked Cheney off by being better at war than him. He’s trying to get past how muddy everything is here, or about how he has a fucking hunting hat on his fucking hair and is required to faux-absently examine the grain pattern on the handle of Cheney's loaner rifle and keep his face level in a manner Cheney will not criticize. He deliberately doesn’t picture Cheney saying “go fuck yourself” before firing a shotgun directly into his face.

Fuck you, he wants to say. Stark Tech does not make guns for deer shooting, they make guns for deer annihilation and that’s why he didn’t bring any show models for this kind of operation. He brought Gulf weapons, because when invited he’d stupidly thought Wyoming was about having a wide open space to throw bombs into. Tony doesn’t even actually like guns that much. Oh, he likes  _guns_ , he likes the design and the machinery, and the elegance of that whole “kill a man from 20 paces” thing. But that’s just it, right? “From 20 paces”, as in, from way back, and effectively, and not right here where you have to wait and then you have to see it?

He's not soft about this. He knows he makes things that kill people. It’s just that there are infinite alternate methods Tony could have proposed for killing these deer, for snuffing them out however humanely or violently the snuffer chose (hey, it’s dealer’s choice with Stark Tech!) and none of them involve stalking through muddy scrub in unflattering orange clothing with a wood-handled Ruger at the ready.  
   
(Okay, so Ruger 44, Carbine, discontinued, in excellent condition, Tony will give props to Cheney for that. It’s a nice gun, if you like wood handled .308s. But so what, so  _what?_ There are  _better guns than this_. He brought some with him, for demonstration, because he thought that was the point of this fucking exercise, but instead it’s about Dick fucking Cheney being a big man and forcing Tony to wear a _fucking hunting cap_  on top of his  _hair_ ).

The only upside besides the Dick thing is that he is actually kind of drunk on shitty domestic beer. He hates literally everything about this so thank god for small favors. He doesn’t get to act drunk, but he does get to feel drunk. Probably most relevant result of this combination is that calling Cheney Dick means that every time Tony does so, he gets to add a silent prefix of “you fucking”.  
   
He does this in his head all the way to the campsite.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, Tony uses crappy homophobic language in his thoughts. That's the kind of guy he is, in 2007.

When Tony was 26, he drove himself from Malibu to Vegas via much too much of the desert, in what he now retrospectively understands as a kind of grand, Didion-esque breakdown. 

 

He didn’t understand that at the time, partly because he hadn’t yet slept with anyone who was vocal about reading Joan Didion, but also partly because he massaged it so smoothly into bursting onto the Vegas scene _fabulously_ that even in his own head he sometimes just remembers it as driving there.

 

That’s not how he remembers it now, though. Not in Wyoming. He’s not sleeping, and of course he isn’t - his sleeping pad is too thin, and it’s incredibly uncomfortable. Rocks are digging into his back and his sleeping bag smells of plastic, which is an additional shitty thing on top of the fact that  _everything about this is shitty_. He hates this and he hates camping. He hates Dick Cheney and he hates Justin Hammer and he hates whoever the fuck Mister Lockheed Martin is, maybe him the most right now because of the cheery ease with which he started the evening’s fire. 

 

They have to be up before dawn. They're going to stalk through the brush and sit all day in deer blinds, waiting, close to each other all snug and intimately while doggedly enshrining the concept that won’t come into colloquial usage until Tony’s old age: not hunting deer, that is, but no homo. 

 

The tent is rippling slightly in the breeze, which makes it impossible to forget that it’s too cold here, in fucking Wyoming, at the edge of the goddamned world. He probably remembers the desert because it was hot, actually. Like it’s comforting or something, like he’s warming himself with a zen memory mind trick. 

 

It was baking in the desert. Like an oven. A shimmering, yawning heat source in which the aching promise of silent respite was always just over the horizon and never came. 

 

Tony rolls over in his bag and reaches for his hunting cap. It’s warm, at least, and he wants to be warm if he’s going to not sleep. It’s on top of his backpack and he finds it easily. Just inside the backpack there’s a hipflask of rye and he hooks that out too. He doesn’t really need to drink any more, but he’s going to anyway. He needs something to damp down the taste of campfire hotdogs, which were also handed to him, as in into his hands. He wants to bathe in hand sanitizer, but for at least two days he’s not even going to be able to bathe in water. It makes him feel sick and drinking helps.

 

He remembers how sick he was then, too. Sick generally, but also sick of shuffling - seamlessly - his recurring incidences of unbridled and terrifying crazy into his carefully stacked deck of appearances. He remembers a sharp ringing sound in his ears that wasn’t even the coke, it was something else entirely; some nauseous radiation, tinnitus of the soul. He thinks he can hear that ringing now, but he’s pretty sure it’s the liquor.

 

He doesn’t remember what he was doing before he left. He doesn’t remember what snapped in him. He doesn’t remember anything, really. Just lights. Flashes. It wasn’t good. 1990 wasn’t a good year.

 

He _does_ remember that he drove erratically to _Lights…Camera…Revolution!_ , which at the time was a recent release. He had the top down, he was wearing cheap plastic sunglasses and a short sleeved Hawaiian shirt in neon green and pink. He wore white jeans and white sneakers too. And he took drugs. He didn’t stop for them, didn’t even tap the coke onto his hand. He snorted it straight out of the vial. 

 

His nose bled once, but he didn’t clean it up properly, just wiped it with his hand, smearing it all over his face. The blood dried on his cheek, then it flaked off, and he snorted more and drank more beer out of cans. He threw the cans onto the road when they were empty.

 

At Barstow, Tony veered towards Arizona. He remembers the highway was clear. What people there were were mostly headed in the other direction. Rushing to California as if they still thought there would be gold.

 

That’s the only time he remembers driving in a specific direction, or electing to, though he must have done mostly, because eventually he ended up in Dowtown outside Binions, holding a 50c margarita in a plastic cup just as if he’d meant to be there. 

 

He drank the margarita strolling down Fremont street, wondering whether to prioritise calling up a friend or getting righteously laid. Nobody knew how bad 1990 was and they never would. It was before GPS and it was before cellphones. It was before _CDs,_ and until Binions, he wasn’t anywhere and nobody knew that. There wasn’t even a JARVIS yet to let him know where he was. 

 

He still has no idea what he was planning to do out there, with that many bullets. He doesn’t know why he had the gun on him. He suspects, but he doesn’t give voice to that suspicion, not even now and not even inside his own head. The beretta was there, that’s all he knows. Call it a coincidence or an act of god. He was winding under the endless sky, drunk and dusty and high as fuck and smelling badly of sweat, absolutely nowhere, and the gun was there with him

 

It felt hot and heavy in his hand when he slipped it out of the glovebox. It felt like the rye feels, now, at the back of his throat. Burning but comforting. Full. And either he was genuinely nowhere or just felt like that because of the state of things, but either way, when he slipped it out, it guided him to swerve off the road and into the desert proper. 

 

When he couldn’t see the road anymore, he slammed the brake, half-stood up in his seat and emptied the clip into a standing prickly pear.

 

He doesn’t know why he did it. He doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t know why he followed it up by getting out of the car and doing it again, stalking forwards, firing at the prickly pear as if it were coming at him. He loaded the magazine upwards of five times, dropping the casings onto the ground, dropping occasional unloaded bullets between his fingers, and kept shooting. The recoil felt like nothing and after the first shot he fired one handed. His ears were already ringing.

 

When he was out of rounds, he stood there breathing, hard, sneakers red from dust, face streaked with grime and blood and patchy with beard growth, seeing himself from outside of his body. The sky hazed and his vision blurred, and for a second he didn’t know if anything existed at all. 

 

When he woke up, he was curled up in the driver’s seat, and it was night. He was sunburned. The inside of the convertible had collected sediment, making it as red as he was. He brushed the dust off where he needed to. He put the gun under the seat. He forgot about it.

 

In Vegas, after finishing the margarita, making a judicious call from a payphone and cleaning himself up in a Lanai suite at the Mirage, he told everybody he’d been to the Grand Canyon.  It was a lie, sure. But not in the scheme of things.

 

He doesn’t know why he remembers this now - as close as he can figure it’s just more 90s, rising up in him as Cheney-adjacent bile - but he does know he needs to take a piss. He rolls over again and pulls his jeans from behind his backpack. He snakes into them in his bag. His legs are cold. Only the middle of him is warm, from drinking, and his head, from the hat. He doesn’t put socks on before he pulls on his boots.

 

Tony does not like pissing in the woods. He’s pissed against walls plenty in his time, and on himself - not that anybody knows about that embarrassing chapter in his life - and later he will become closely acquainted with pissing in a lot of other, even less private places. But for right now? In this dark undergrowth? Nature all around? No fucking thank you. There are probably bugs in here. 

 

There is _definitely_ Justin Hammer in here, which is worse. Tony can tell it’s him coming from his walk. The dead leaves and bracken crackle in a distinctly assholish way that nobody could imitate. “Fuck off, Hammer,” Tony says, without turning around or taking his hand off his dick. 

 

“Now, Anthony,” Hammer says. “What kind of way is that to talk to a fellow American?” He steps forward, through the brush surrounding the tree. He unzips his fly, Tony hears him doing that with an attempted panache he wouldn’t have thought possible. It’s your fucking _fly_ , Hammer, Tony wants to say. _God_. How are you making that into theatre?

 

He doesn’t say it though. Tony is well aware that Hammer is attempting to do an intimidation thing by pissing near him, and saying anything will inevitably just feed right back into it. The one thing that Hammer is maybe _just_ slightly better at at this stage of their lives is being confrontingly faggy, and it’s beyond unpleasant in ways Tony can’t entirely explain. He’s stuck between rolling his eyes and literally wanting to roll his skin from his bones like a dirty onesie, but he’s also stuck pissing because _biology_ and rye and like a thousand domestic beers. Not for the first time, he wishes for a robot body.

 

There is basically no doubt that Hammer wants Tony to be aware that he, Justin, is touching his dick. And that he is taking a casual look at Tony’s. Tony doesn’t dignify it. He’s just counting the seconds until he can shake off. 

 

“How,” Hammer asks him, with the casual tone of actual bathroom banter (as if Tony would talk to someone in a _bathroom_ ), “do you think it’s going?”

“It was going better before you came over,” Tony says. 

 

Hammer snort laughs. It’s obnoxious. Tony is not being funny, he’s being insulting. And he’s drunk and rattled from his desert memory, and he wants Hammer to just get the fuck out of there. 

 

“What do you think of Randy?” Hammer asks. 

 

Tony is about to say Who’s Randy? but then he puts it together and understands that Randy is Mister Lockheed. “I don’t know,” Tony says. “He seems like… a guy from Lockheed Martin? I feel like their whole schtick is slightly crappier Stark Tech.”

“I think so too,” Hammer says. 

“I mean, less crappy than Hammertech, but still crappy.”

 

Hammer gives that another indulgent snort. It’s too much for Tony. He shakes his dick and tucks it back into his jeans and starts walking away from the tree. 

 

“Tony,” Hammer calls out. “Are you done? You want another… there’s still some beers.” 

 

Tony absolutely refuses to talk pissing details with Justin Hammer. He ignores the invitation and stalks back to his tent, where he finishes the last drop of rye and falls belligerently into the sleep of the dead. He knows that in the morning it’ll be wall-to-wall Cheney, that people will hand him things, that Hammer will cruise him in the forrest again. Pretending to be dead is far better. In the morning, he’ll do this shit again, but for right now he’s going to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some seriously uncool language in this one, guys. Slurs, including the R* one. 
> 
> There's also like, express and deliberate warmongering. Reference to Iran-Contra.

In Tony’s memory-dream he is 25, and he feels, again, how small he is. He’s not tall and he’s never going to be tall, and he isn’t even really particularly muscely yet. He’s stocky, and a little fat around the middle, though he’s been skinnier and skinner since he’s been on the blow and he can’t say he exactly hates that. He’s short, that kind of thing matters.

 

But it’s not that that makes him feel small. These men aren’t paying attention to Tony’s actual body. They’re seeing something else - his acumen, his business presence, his vision. They see him small because they don’t think he’s substantial. These old, balding, monotone men with dark suits and white hair, lurking around the boardroom table like vultures at a funeral. They have an opinion about Tony, and it’s fully formed. They don’t think he’s substantial. 

 

They smell of mahogany and polish and cigars and cigarettes. The room is wood paneled and dark and close and there’s too much smoke in it. Tony doesn’t smoke. He hates smoking. It’s probably the most Californian thing about him, or it will be, until he reaches his late middle age and discovers the joys of spray tan. And subtle amounts of botox.

 

25-year-old Tony does not need botox. His skin is as firm and dewy as his indoor, night owl, chemically assisted existence will allow. His hair is thick and has no grey in it, and his suit is expensive and impeccably cut. His underwear is silk, which he regrets because it’s confusingly sweaty, but it is also expensive and so it will do for now.

 

He clears his throat. “It’s straightforward,” he tells the board. “You think it’s more complicated than it is, everyone does but listen. We can benefit from deregulation a lot more than you think we can, a lot more than we’re doing.”

 

Obi raises an eyebrow. Tony knows he’s about to say something to reel him in. Tony keeps going. Obi won’t actually interrupt him, that would look bad. Tony is CEO in name, even if so far it’s been difficult to be CEO in practice. 

 

That’s going to change. He’s changing it now. He summons every bit of confrontational strength in his little, only very slightly chubby, 25 year old self. 

 

“We’ve been concentrating on transport,” Tony says, “because that’s easy. We’re paying basically nothing for airfreight and even less for shipping, and that’s good, I’m happy about that. But it’s not enough. We should be producing the means of transport, for starters, or we should have a stake in that. And we have to switch up manufacturing, because if transport is this affordable we don’t need everything coming from the US.” 

 

There’s the sound of throats clearing all around the table. Scoffing, almost. It sounds like scoffing.

 

Tony leans forward. “And there are two other things I want us to think about: I want us to push for energy reform, and I want to start treating at least some capital as a flexible investment for funding that, and I want a straight line to raw overseas materials.”

 

A board member, whose name Tony hasn’t bothered to memorize, stirs to life like a Tolkien Ent. As if he’s just noticed that Tony is talking, and intends to swat him away and return to slumber. “Energy reform in what sense?” he says. His voice creaks.

 

“They’ll deregulate it,” Tony says. “That’s the way the wind is blowing. Transport, communications… it’s coming. If we push, if we grease the wheels a little bit, I guarantee we can open up a whole new market for Stark Industries to step into. We need lobbyists, and that’s why we need some capital operating independently of Stark Ind. on paper. They’ll deregulate.”

 

The room is filled with tiny sounds. Cigarettes tapping and being lit. Movements in chairs. Fabric brushing. Paper. No-one is hearing him. He shoots a look at Obi, whose face is sympathetic.

 

“Stark Industries makes weapons,” another board member says. His voice creaks too. Obi is probably the youngest person here, besides Tony. Which is saying something, it really is. Tony has had enough.

 

“Yes, Stark Industries makes weapons,” he repeats, sarcastically. “Very good… uh Andy? Andy.” 

 

The board member’s name isn’t Andy, and even if it was he’d definitely be an An _drew_. He opens his mouth to say so but Tony doesn’t let him. 

 

“But that doesn’t need to be all we make,” he says. “I’m developing dad’s arc reactor, we have a real shot at renewable energy. People remember the gas crisis, they’ll want it.”

 

The small sounds continue and Tony, for a second, feels nervous again. Then he remembers that he’s both the brains - and the boss - of this operation. “Hi, CEO here?” he says. “I’m putting the Stark in Stark Industries for you guys and I’m, you know, I’m, uh, your boss now? I can’t in good conscience advise you to dick around making shitty objections to things I am telling you directly to do because, um, if you do that I will fire you. Are we clear, gentlemen?”

 

There’s rumbling. Scoffing again. They’re testing him, Tony thinks, whether or not they mean to. They don’t think he’s substantial. Obi looks at him indulgently, and Tony almost starts to get mad. Then he doesn’t. He pushes it down and he doesn’t.

 

“So they deregulate,” he tells them. “And we’re in, in terms of renewable energy. But…”

 

“What?” not-Andy asks, indulgently, patronizingly. Tony narrows his eyes.

“But let’s not put all our eggs in one basket. When I say we grease the wheels, I mean… well I’m not spending Stark money on a future maybe. So maybe we get a stake in gas too. In petroleum.”

 

“I see,” Andy says, amused. It’s pretty clear he doesn’t. The men around him smile, tap their cigarettes again. God, Tony thinks, does Phillip Morris have stock in these guys or something?

 

He absolutely refuses to cough. “I mean a stake at the source,” he says. “We already make the weapons. What if we got something from them as well as money? What if we indicate to the White House that we’re willing to cut a… more expansive deal.”

 

“What are you saying, Tony?” Obi asks him. 

 

“I’m saying,” Tony says, “that maybe we get a stake in gas by assisting the United States in the securing of some Middle Eastern property.”

 

That does it. The room is silent for at least a minute. Nobody rustles or inhales a single thing. Tony leans back in his chair and examines his manicure.

 

Finally, another one of the board men, not not-Andy and not the Ent, says, “you’re talking about inciting a resource war in the Middle East? Are you aware of what you’re suggesting, young man?”

 

“Mister Stark,” Tony says. He doesn’t look up. He’s not going to look at these old men like he’s begging them for approval. “And like we even have to do any inciting. Come on guys, read a paper occasionally. Like, a nudge.”

 

Throat clearing begins and then continues in rising intonations.

 

“You can stop looking shocked,” he goes on. He still hasn’t looked up to check if they do look shocked, but he’s confident they probably do. “This patriotic morality thing is played out. We make weapons, like our pal Andy here reminded us. You know, guns? Bombs? Bang bang, dead dead? I think by now we can stop pretending that that has anything to do with… I don’t know, your American dream or something. Wars happen and we profit.”

 

Nobody says anything to that, but when he sneaks a look he can see that they want to. Good.

 

“I know about Iran, by the way,” Tony says. “It’s funny, actually, because from what I can tell you guys all know about Iran too, but you somehow neglected to mention it to me. That’s odd. Is Iran, um, not something a CEO needs to know about? I mean, it was news, wasn’t it? Were you saving it? It’s just it’s been four years now so I don’t know what occasion you’re waiting for, but if you want me to act surprised, I guess…”

 

“You weren’t 21, Tony,” Obi says. “But you’re right, I should have told you.” 

 

Tony ignores him. He loves Obi, obviously, but he can’t let himself be undercut right now.

 

“It’s…” a board member starts up saying, with a tone like he’s disagreeing. “The Sandinistas… it’s not the same. We had a responsibility to…”

 

Tony doesn’t let him finish. He doesn’t want these old men talking about the scourge of socialism. That’s all just window dressing. It’s bullshit. He doesn’t care. “Enough, okay?” he cuts in. “I’m your boss. Remember? I said it like a minute ago. Is this a memory problems thing? Because we have a health plan.” 

 

There’s silence. He knows they’re thinking about the board’s executive powers, wondering if they can fire him, if there’s a loophole despite Tony’s name and inherited controlling interest. He shuts it down.

 

“Let me spell this out for you,” he says. “I’m saying I want the energy market as well as the weapons, and that’s it. It’s not impossible, and I’m telling you exactly how come it’s not impossible if you’ll just turn up your hearing aids. It shouldn’t be enough to scare you. If you wanna get scared, maybe think about a retirement home, because that’s where you’re going if you don’t focus the fuck up, gentlemen.”

 

Hot damn. Tony feels like fucking Scarface. After leaving the meeting, he’s going to bury his face in cocaine to compliment that feeling.

 

“It’s that simple,” he says. “It’s two parts, simple as pi as a function. Gas, investment in the raw material, but also we need a clear line to materials for manufacture. Okay?That’s part two.”

 

By now, he has everybody’s undivided attention. He continues. “We get it through North Africa, via the Middle East. We can get to Wakanda that way. We keep enough manufacturing in the states to look patriotic, but we ship in raw materials and outsource the finer parts. I want tight quality control, but that isn’t going to be difficult - ten to one it’ll be even easier.”

 

“And Middle Eastern property?” ol’ not-Andy says. He really has a bee in his bonnet. He sounds appalled.

 

“You’re suggesting we don’t take US ore?” someone else adds. “You’re talking about a lot of jobs here. Union won’t like it.”

 

“That’s the other thing,” Tony says, leaning forward and feeling the shadows sculpt his face like he’s Emperor fucking Palpatine. “No more ground to the unions. We take PATCO as precedent. They agitate, they’re fired.” 

  

That suggestion at least is not particularly controversial. Elderly WASPS like these motherfuckers have never liked unions. There’s a little murmuring, but from what Tony can gather it’s mostly the murmuring of assent. 

 

“Stark is non-union now, okay? Nobody organizes here, it’s done. PATCO is basically ironclad insurance that they can’t fuck with us even if they wanted to. There will be no striking, there will be no organizing here, there will be no worker’s anything. It’s over. I’m done with it. I want to start rolling out benefits, but we do that on our terms, and they can take it, or fuck off. This isn’t the 70s anymore, guys.”

 

Obi is giving him the strangest look. It’s sort of pride, but it’s also sort of… awe? Tony can’t figure it out. He feels strange now, dislocated, high, even though he’s barely had anything.

 

“So we’re having it on two fronts,” he continues. “We keep developing clean energy, and we have a stake in petroleum, we have a stake in this gulf thing, and ore, manufacturing ore. Are you keeping up with me so far?”

 

By now, nobody gives anything back except silent nods. Good. Excellent.

 

“And that capital,” Tony explains, “that pro-petroleum capital, I want to free it up for lobbyists. We need it to pick up some distance from Stark. Start putting it in banks. I need to see some proposals on that. I want us to start taking advantage of the Depository Institute… whatever.”

 

“Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act,” Obi says, quietly. But he’s not correcting Tony, he’s just providing the information.

 

“All Stark Industries money is in banks, Master Stark,” says the board member in the red tie, another not not-Andy. 

 

“Mister Stark. Doctor, actually, if you want to get technical. And you’re not listening to me. Not in a bank _account_ , are you retarded? I want them to lend for us, do you even fucking know economics? I took one paper I didn’t finish, I shouldn’t be the person explaining this to you.”

 

“Bank accounts… do lend, Ma…Mr. St…”

 

“I’ve seen It’s A Wonderful Life, Jimmy,” Tony says. The board member’s name is not Jimmy. “I mean directly, you know I mean directly. I’m talking about financial trading, obviously. Use context cues.”

 

“So essentially you’re proposing that we break our own monopoly on our own product?” 

 

“No?” Tony says. “Jesus, how did you get there? Focus up, did I not tell you to do that like five fucking minutes ago? Jesus christ. I’m proposing vertical integration on a global level. You know, like _everyone’s_ doing? Did you sleep through Reagan, or what?”

 

Nobody says anything to that either- it’s the fucks, probably. Tony knows they’re upset about how freely he’s swearing. Good. Let them. Let them crumble like dust clutching their propriety to their hearts while he takes control of his company, _his company_ , and drags it into the fucking future. “I’m proposing we separate as much of this from being centralized under the Stark name as possible and at the same time pursuing as many avenues as we can and centralizing them monetarily,” he says. “We don’t need our name on it to be making money. We don’t need it situated geographically in these United States like Smaug’s fucking mountain. Our prestige brand is our end product and the name goes there. Let it go, gentlemen. Stark isn’t a family, it’s a business.”

 

“All of this assumes we’ll get the Middle Eastern contract in the first instance,” says not-Jimmy or not-Andy. Tony doesn’t care.

 

“We will,” Tony tells him, confidently.

 

“And you’re sure of that? How?”

 

“Raw fucking firepower,” Tony says. “That’s how dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s working out pretty well so far.”

 

He is 43 when he wakes up, and he feels terrible. He is too old for this magnitude of hangover. Every single muscle hurts and his stomach lurches up into his mouth with a vengeance.

 

It’s still dark. He pulls his watch up to his face and sees that it is only just past 4:30. Outside the tent, everyone is moving around. He hears matches. Kitchen noises. He hopes to every established deity that one of these assholes is at least making coffee. His eyes adjust to the lack of light very slowly, but he fumbles around for his pants and socks and shoes anyway. 

 

His hunting cap is still on his head. He doesn't want to think about the hair disaster that’s probably under it. At 4 fucking 30 some a.m. in goddamned Wyoming, he figures he can tolerate spending a few minutes with bad hair. 

 

Once dressed, or sort of, he unzips and staggers out of the tent. Randy is crouched over the fire, holding a blue metal pot, the other two are packing…. something. Tony can’t see it in the dark. 

 

Whatever is in the blue pot looks like coffee. It smells like coffee. He forgives Randy every transgression up until this point. 

 

“Morning,” Randy says. His face is significantly less annoying than it was yesterday. 

 

“Sleep okay?” Tony asks him. 

 

“Sure,” Randy says. “I’m used to the wilderness. Though my place is down in Tennessee. Appalachia.”

 

Tony thinks about that for a second. He can’t picture Tennessee. That whole situation is flyover country to him, he realizes. He knows DC and he knows the North East - he’s known the North East pretty well since Exeter - and he knows SoCal, obviously. Plus Palm Springs and few adjacencies. But not Tennessee. He can’t imagine anything that would take him to Tennessee. “Colder up here, huh?” he says. 

 

“Damn straight,” Randy says. “Brass monkeys out here, buddy. Goddamned witch’s tit. We get anything today I’m going to climb into it like Han Solo on fucking Hoth.”

 

Tony figures he can work with Randy if there’s going to be Star Wars references. At 43 he is not a nerd in any way, and has no nerd voice, and no nerd fashion, and absolutely does not get excited about quality dice rolls, but he appreciates a good Star Wars reference like anybody who was, you know, alive in the 80s.

 

“Want some coffee?” Randy says. “I’m not going to lie to you, I half-assed this, because I’m so fucking hungover I’m actually probably already dead. But there’s caffeine in it.”

 

“I feel you, Randy,” Tony says, “I feel you on a spiritual level.” 

 

Randy hands him a cup of coffee. “What’s that short for?” Tony asks. “Randrew?” 

 

“Randolph,” Randy says. He pokes the fire. 

 

Over by the pile of equipment, where Tony can see Cheney inspecting all of the rifles and pulling out netting to check it for holes, Justin is dancing from foot to foot like he’s upset about something. He can’t hear what they’re saying over there, but it looks like something. It looks like something that is winding him up. Maybe it’s about the guns.

 

It’s weird watching Cheney’s body language from this vantage point. One of the creepiest things about the way Dick operates is that he moves very sparingly. Still, most of the time, and when he moves it’s deliberate. The thing about Cheney is that nothing he ever does - ever - is accidental. Even his smallest movements make that apparent. It’s hard to talk to him when you notice it. You notice he’s thinking about you, evaluating you, and that nothing you say will take him by surprise.

 

This is maybe the first time in Tony’s entire life that he feels a small amount of sympathy for Justin Hammer. Cheney’s upsetting him, and since Cheney’s ability to horrify only works on humans, Hammer seems a little less obnoxious to him now. 

 

It won’t last when they’re in the field. But for now he summons his magnanimity. “Hey,” he calls. “Hey you guys want coffee? Randy’s Martha Stewarted this campfire.”

 

Justin looks up. Grateful. His glasses are steamed up, probably with panicked breathing. 

 

"Drink it quick, ladies," Dick announces. "We're not fucking around out here." 


End file.
